Modeling tissue and blood gas kinetics in coastal and offshore common bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus
Date
17/07/2018Keywords
Metadata
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Abstract
Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) are highly versatile breath-holding predators that have adapted to a wide range of foraging niches from rivers and coastal ecosystems to deep-water oceanic habitats. Considerable research has been done to understand how bottlenose dolphins manage O2 during diving, but little information exists on other gases or how pressure affects gas exchange. Here we used a dynamic multi-compartment gas exchange model to estimate blood and tissue O2, CO2, and N2 from high-resolution dive records of two different common bottlenose dolphin ecotypes inhabiting shallow (Sarasota Bay) and deep (Bermuda) habitats. The objective was to compare potential physiological strategies used by the two populations to manage shallow and deep diving life styles. We informed the model using species-specific parameters for blood hematocrit, resting metabolic rate, and lung compliance. The model suggested that the known O2 stores were sufficient for Sarasota Bay dolphins to remain within the calculated aerobic dive limit (cADL), but insufficient for Bermuda dolphins that regularly exceeded their cADL. By adjusting the model to reflect the body composition of deep diving Bermuda dolphins, with elevated muscle mass, muscle myoglobin concentration and blood volume, the cADL increased beyond the longest dive duration, thus reflecting the necessary physiological and morphological changes to maintain their deep-diving life-style. The results indicate that cardiac output had to remain elevated during surface intervals for both ecotypes, and suggests that cardiac output has to remain elevated during shallow dives in-between deep dives to allow sufficient restoration of O2 stores for Bermuda dolphins. Our integrated modeling approach contradicts predictions from simple models, emphasizing the complex nature of physiological interactions between circulation, lung compression, and gas exchange.
Citation
Fahlman , A , Jensen , F , Tyack , P L & Wells , R 2018 , ' Modeling tissue and blood gas kinetics in coastal and offshore common bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus ' , Frontiers in Physiology , vol. 9 , 838 . https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2018.00838
Publication
Frontiers in Physiology
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1664-042XType
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2018 Fahlman, Jensen, Tyack and Wells. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Description
AF (N00014-17-1-2756), PT (N000141512553) and FHJ (N00014-14-1-0410) were supported by the Office of Naval Research, and FHJ by an AIASCOFUND fellowship from Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, under EU's FP7 program (Agreement No. 609033). PT received funding from the MASTS pooling initiative (The Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland) and their support is gratefully acknowledged. MASTS is funded by the Scottish Funding Council (grant reference HR09011) and contributing institutions. Funding for the Sarasota Bay and Bermuda field-work was provided by Dolphin Quest, Inc., and Office of Naval Research (N00014-14-1-0563).Collections
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